Readers of Black Dove may have been reminded of our headline last November (Is CinemaxX the Cheapest Exhibition Stock in Europe?) this week as Vue paid €6.45 a share for the company, subject to the usual regulatory approvals. In fact the offer by Vue was not particularly generous, equating to an enterprise value of almost exactly six times historic EBITDA, at the lower end of current stock market valuations for exhibition stocks. Nevertheless it compares favourably with the €3.30 at which CinemaxX shares were languishing when we wrote about them.

Having reviewed the rather complicated way we have been doing things, I am sorry to say that, at least for now, this is the end of the road for Black Dove. Instead of maintaining a separate blog we will be publishing an occasional newsletter directly from the Dodona Research web site; you can subscribe to it here. The first issue has more on the Vue acquisition. We are also bringing a more methodical approach to bear on our monitoring of publicly-quoted exhibition companies, with the first step being a spreadsheet comparing valuations, also available on our web site. Both are free.